


Pussy Galore

by kalpurna



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Cats, Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalpurna/pseuds/kalpurna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had a conversation one time (uh, five times) with drunktuesdays about Derek Hale being a cat, and we kept having to just stop talking because it was so true that we had nothing more to say.  So here's that fic!  </p><p>Derek gets turned into a cat.  Stiles learns to be a cat person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pussy Galore

**Author's Note:**

> As with all fic I write, drunktuesdays is responsible for everything. Beta read by giddygeek who is a gift and a treasure and a gem.

There are really two aspects of the situation that Stiles can’t get over. First, obviously, is the plain reality that Derek Hale has been turned into a cat. Second -- maybe more trivial, but somehow equally mindblowing -- is the fact that the cat version of Derek is incredibly fluffy.

“Dude, you are fluffy as fuck,” Stiles tells him.

It’s impressive to watch Derek wash himself, as a cat. All that fur takes forever to clean, but Derek perseveres, licking grimly onwards like he’s been condemned to twenty years of bathing for some unspeakable crime. He has to crane his neck up to get all the way to the end of each long strand. Wet fur sticks up in sad tufts all over his body.

Derek pauses, one foot still held in the air, and stares at him.

“I’m not scared of you while you’re a cat,” Stiles says. Unblinking, Derek watches him for a moment, and then yawns, exposing all his sharp teeth. Stiles swallows. “Okay, maybe a little.”

Conceding the staring contest before it can start up again, he turns back to his internet research. He hasn’t found anything useful yet about the spell, but he figures he’d better look further into what’s poisonous to cats and what to feed them and so on, in case Derek’s stuck like this for a while. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the Cruel and Unusual Bath resume.

Really, though, things have gotten much better than they were. An hour ago, Derek was still hiding under Stiles’s bed like an angry, violent dust bunny, while Stiles alternated between trying to coax him out, and succumbing to the temptation to make mean cat jokes.

“Come on, gimme that pussy,” Stiles had said, laughing helplessly to himself, cheek pressed against his dirty carpet as he peered under his bed. “But seriously, Derek, please come out, I need to see if I can help you.”

Derek actually hissed at him. His eyes glinted in the dark.

“I’m not kidding, Derek, please come out,” he pleaded, and then tossed a balled-up sock across the room. “Look, a mouse!” Derek’s gaze snapped towards the sock, apparently involuntarily. When he looked back at Stiles, his tail was actually bristling with rage. 

“Rrraaaaoooooow,” Derek said, glowering. Stiles sighed.

“God, you’re so hostile.”

Derek’s entire fluffy body seemed devoted to communicating _fuck you fuck you fuck you_.

He’d only consented to emerge when Stiles went and found some leftover chicken to tempt him with. After sniffing the air suspiciously for a full minute, he’d crept forward, snapped his teeth so viciously close to Stiles’s fingers that Stiles had dropped the entire drumstick in a panic, and then settled down to dissect his prey all over Stiles’s poor, abused carpet. 

Thirty seconds of googling later, Stiles had needed to fight him to get it back. 

“It’s full of _bones!_ ” he had yelled, wrestling against the powerful grip of Derek’s jaws. “You’re going to _choke!_ Growling around his mouthful, Derek tried to claw him away.

He’s not sure he would have won that battle at all if Derek hadn’t accidentally let go when he opened his mouth to hiss. It was a Pyrrhic victory. There were blood and barbecue sauce stains all over the carpet, as if it hadn’t been gross enough already, and he’d used a whole box of bandaids on his arms. It’s been hours and the scratches still sting.

All things considered, angry baths are a big step up.

"I'm really not a cat person, you know," he says over his shoulder, clicking on another link. "But I guess you probably aren't either. Except in, you know, the literal sense." 

The truth is that after determining that barbecue chicken is not, in fact, a recommended part of a complete feline breakfast, there's not much more to look into. On the other hand, Stiles still doesn't know what you do to entertain cats, and he _really_ doesn't know what anyone does to entertain Derek, in any shape. He’s not sure Derek believes in entertainment. Pretending to keep doing research seems like the better part of valor right now.

Unfortunately, he’s only about halfway through the Wikipedia article on the Principality of Liechtenstein -- this isn’t the first time he’s read it, actually, although he couldn’t for the life of him explain why -- when he hears suspicious noises behind him. Noises of _destruction_.

When he turns around, dread rising in his chest, he finds Derek systematically shredding the flannel shirt Stiles left hanging off the side of his bed. 

“That’s my favorite shirt!” Stiles yells. It is, too. It’s big and shapeless and comfortable as hell, and he’s had it forever. Jackson once told him it made him look like a couch from the eighties, but really: fuck Jackson.

When Stiles comes at him waving his arms, Derek stops, but the damage is done. The shirt hangs in pathetic shreds, unrecoverable. Derek sprawls on his side, licks his paws, and looks supremely self-satisfied. Stiles glares daggers at him.

“You’re not cute,” he says, untruthfully. Derek just slow-blinks at him, closes his eyes, and goes deliberately to sleep. 

He doesn’t stir when Stiles stomps around putting all his laundry safely out of reach. He doesn’t stir when Stiles brushes his teeth. He does crack one eye open when Stiles changes into his pajamas, but when he sees Stiles looking back, he immediately shuts it again.

Stiles climbs into bed and wonders how Derek manages to make going to sleep look so insulting. He attempts it himself, tossing aggressively from side to side, but suspects it mostly just looks like he got tangled in his own bedding. Also, he has to sit up and smooth everything out again afterwards to get comfortable, which probably negates any impact the sheet-rustling did have.

Just as he's finally dropping off, he hears the bedsprings squeak, and feels a dull impact on his shoulder. He turns his head groggily to find that Derek is awake and headbutting him. 

"Mrow," Derek says, peremptory.

"What?" Stiles says. Derek meows again, and Stiles sits up a bit and pantomimes confusion, turning his palm upward.

"What?" he says again. "What do you want?"

Derek noses at the corner of Stiles's blankets. Stiles looks at them.

"You want to… come under here?" he says, confused. "Can't you get under by yourself? They're not heavy." Sitting back on his haunches, Derek regards him with disapproval. "Do you need an engraved invitation?" 

Apparently, the answer is yes, because Derek waits for Stiles to actually lift up the edge of the blankets and invite him in before meowing again and army-crawling underneath to nestle along Stiles's side. He's very warm and cosy in this shape. A cold, wet nose presses for a moment against the bare skin of Stiles’s hip, and he jumps.

Gradually the cold air that had come under the blankets with Derek is replaced by warmth, and almost imperceptibly, a sense of vibration. Oh my god, Stiles thinks. Very quiet, very low, Derek is purring.

Trying not to move a muscle and disturb this once-in-a-lifetime event, Stiles lies there for a while, considering whether or not he would have expected Derek to be into spooning. On the one hand, no. Worlds of no. But on the other hand, the guy can be kind of handsy. He's still turning the issue over in his mind, looking at it from all angles, when he unexpectedly falls asleep.

In the morning, Stiles awakens to a faceful of fur, and the discovery that the spell hasn’t worn off on its own during the night.

“Damn it,” he says, muffled by the bulk of Derek’s -- fuck, he doesn’t even know. Back? Butt? He shoves feebly at the mass of fur blocking his airways. Cat Derek isn't actually that much easier to shove around than normal Derek, and waits just long enough before moving to make it clear that it's a choice.

There's cat hair in Stiles's mouth. There's cat hair _everywhere_. He frowns at Derek and goes to brush his teeth.

He looks at himself in the mirror while he brushes and considers how he can turn this situation to his own advantage. Some people -- some people such as Stiles, 24 hours ago -- might think that Derek being a cat would already put Stiles at an advantage over him. Those people, Stiles believes, have never actually spent time with a cat. He spits thoughtfully in the sink.

When he comes back into the bedroom after a short detour to the kitchen junk drawer, Derek has gotten out of bed and is sitting in the middle of the floor, grimly washing his paws. Stiles opens his hand to reveal the laser pointer he found nesting under about fifty twist ties and paper clips.

"Oh, Derek," he calls out, and switches it on. 

It's as if he's hit a switch on Derek himself. In a split second, Derek goes from lethargic to frantic, flipping from his back to his feet, poised in predator mode and staring at the red dot wobbling on Stiles's bedroom wall.

He leaps for it and crashes into the drywall with a thud. Stiles nearly pees his pants laughing.

Derek's head whips back and forth following the light. When Stiles sweeps it up in a sudden arc on the wall, he almost does a backflip trying to keep up. It's fantastic. 

After a few minutes of watching Derek tear around the room, though, Stiles starts to feel like kind of a jerk. The problem is that there's no way for Derek to actually _catch_ the thing. He tries switching it off right when Derek pounces on it a few times, but it doesn't seem like Derek's convinced. Stiles clicks it off again and watches Derek's sides heave. His mouth is hanging open, and he's panting.

"Hey, buddy, you caught it," he says encouragingly. Derek looks at him and meows as if to say, you're an asshole, and I know how laser pointers work. But does he, really? It's not clear how much is still there of Derek's human -- well, humanoid -- brain. The "you're an asshole" part seems like a good sign, but then again, Stiles isn't sure that's not standard cat behavior. 

Derek naps for a while after that, sprawled out over the corner of a hardcover textbook, which looks uncomfortable as hell. It seems kind of ridiculous for him to be napping again already, since he slept through the night just like Stiles did. It’s as if Derek’s using his feline vacation to catch up on all the sleep he’s missed in the past six years. Not even the sound of heavy gunfire from Stiles’s Xbox can wake him.

“I think you’re just using this cat thing as an excuse to be lazy,” Stiles tells him. He doesn’t even twitch.

Eventually Derek does stir himself, at lunchtime, when Stiles brings a bowl of SpaghettiOs upstairs. He prowls around Stiles’s desk chair while Stiles clutches the bowl protectively to his chest, then leaps up onto the desk to sit down and stare Stiles in the face.

“Mraow,” he says, and flicks his tail back and forth.

“Are you -- do you want my SpaghettiOs?” Stiles asks, although it’s pretty clear what the answer will be.

“Mraaow,” Derek says again, firmly, and licks his chops. Breathing through his nose, Stiles rapidly shovels several spoonfulls into his mouth so his cheeks bulge out like a chipmunk, then sets the remains down on the desk and watches Derek eagerly dig in.

“That’s not normal,” he tells him, after he’s swallowed. “You’re not normal. Normal cats do not eat SpaghettiOs.”

Derek makes disturbing smacking sounds and licks the bowl so hard it almost falls off the desk. Stiles has to put his hand out to support it. After a few seconds he starts absently petting Derek’s lower back with his other hand, just for something to do.

"Mraaaaaow," says Derek urgently, whipping his head around to look at Stiles’s hand. Stiles snatches it back. 

"Does that mean stop? Does that -- did you like that? Do it again? Stop? What does that noise mean?" he says. It was a very ambiguous sound. He's not sure Derek knows what it meant himself.

Avoiding the whole question, Derek descends from the desk and walks over to jump up onto the hard chair next to Stiles's bed, settling in a sphinx position. Of course Derek would choose to sit there instead of somewhere soft and warm like the bed, Stiles thinks. God forbid he actually be comfortable.

It's actually bizarrely fitting, when Stiles thinks about it. Derek wasn't that far off from being a cat to begin with. He's well-groomed, but he doesn't always care where he sleeps. He's vicious and mean, but he also sort of wants people to like him. He tries his hardest to make friends with the people who like him the least. 

Speaking of which, Stiles should probably text Scott. He wants to talk about this with someone who can, you know, respond. He grabs his phone from the desk and hesitates. How do you even open a conversation like this?

 _derek is a cat come ovr_. Stiles stares at what he’s just typed. It seems -- abrupt. He deletes and starts over.

 _theres a situation w derek_ , he tries, and deletes it again. Too vague. Maybe it’ll be easier out loud, he thinks, and scrolls through his contacts. 

"Hey, Scott, what's up?" he says, when Scott picks up the phone. Derek cracks one suspicious eye open. "Do you want to, like… come over? We've got a -- an issue."

"Okay," Scott says. He sounds confused, but game. "I'm just going over to the hospital to see my mom, and then I'll --"

"No, I think you'd better come now," Stiles says, looking at Derek. Scott pauses.

"Is everything okay?" he asks.

"Uh...” Stiles says, trailing off deliberately.

“Okay, I’m on my way,” Scott says, and hangs up. Maybe Stiles is misrepresenting the issue’s urgency, but he feels justified. This is not something Stiles should have to handle alone.

Derek blinks at him slowly.

"No offense, but your fur makes you look kind of fat," Stiles says, tilting his head to the side to get a better angle. Laying his head on his white paws and closing his eyes, Derek falls pointedly asleep. How does he _do_ that? 

When Scott slides through the window a few minutes later, Derek startles awake and sits up into a wary crouch. 

"What's going on?" Scott asks Stiles, forehead creased with concern. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of Derek and turns to get a better view. "Hey, I didn't know you got a cat." He crouches down in front of the chair, and Derek stares back at him, mild panic in his eyes. 

"Oh, Princess Frederica Fluffenstein?" Stiles says. "I rescued her from a dumpster, but I might keep her. She's just so _pretty_!"

Derek opens his mouth, but no sound emerges, so he just looks kind of slackjawed and stupid.

"She's gorgeous," Scott says, giving Derek a warm smile and holding out his flat palm. At an apparent loss for feline words, Derek turns his disgruntled back on them both and lies back down, tail lashing the air like the world's softest whip.

"I don't know how old she is, but she's _my_ little baby kitten face, isn't she," Stiles says, really getting into it. Derek should get turned into a cat every day. This is incredibly enjoyable.

"You haven't taken her to the vet yet?" Scott asks, disapproval creeping into his tone.

"Uh…" Stiles says, and considers it. Actually, it's a good idea in more ways than one. Derek should go see the vet because he's a cat, and the cat should go see Deaton because he's Derek. 

Scott says, "He's open until five. I’m guessing you don’t have a cat carrier?”

Stiles controls his facial expression with great effort, delighted beyond words at the idea of a portable container to keep Derek just where you want him, complete with convenient handle. It would be so useful in day to day life. “No,” he says with regret. “I guess you'll have to carry hi -- her on your lap.”

But when Scott tries to pick Derek up, Derek yowls so plaintively even Stiles feels bad about it. He doesn't try to claw him or anything, just arches his back miserably and looks towards the floor. Scott hastily puts him back down.

"Maybe you should carry her," he says. "I can drive."

"Well, I'm not sure if -- oh, huh," Stiles says, surprised at Derek's lack of protest when Stiles bends to carefully gather up his furry body. His unresisting weight in Stiles's arms is oddly affecting, and Stiles smiles down at him and adjusts his band-aided arms to make him more comfortable.

If the car makes Derek nervous, then the vet's office must be making him a candidate for kitty Prozac.

“Hey, it’s okay, dude,” Stiles says softly, jiggling him a bit. He wonders what it is about vets that sets animals off. Maybe it’s something about the smell? But if that’s the problem, shouldn’t it bother Derek in his regular body, too? What if it does, and Derek’s just better at hiding it when he’s himself?

“Mrrroooaaaaaaw,” Derek says darkly, and puts his little paw against Stiles’s shoulder.

By the time Derek's been safely deposited on the metal examination table, he's stopped even vocalizing his distress, containing himself to staring miserably, longingly down at the floor. His muscles are tight and he’s all bunched up with his feet tucked under him like a loaf of bread. It’s impossible not to feel a pang of sympathy for the poor guy. He’s a cat, he’s freaking out, and he’s for sure going to be embarrassed if he remembers acting like this once he’s back to his stoic, closed-off self.

“Hey, shhh,” Stiles says, awkwardly, and tries tentatively rubbing his head with two fingers. Derek leans almost imperceptibly into the touch. With more confidence, he moves his hand to scratch under Derek’s fuzzy chin. 

“She really likes you!” says Scott, beaming. 

Derek blinks very slowly, twice, and tilts his head up so Stiles can get a good angle. Stiles feels strangely powerful, being able to comfort someone this much with such a small thing. “It’s okay,” he says, stroking Derek’s soft back gently with his other hand. 

“Hello, boys,” Deaton says, shutting the door behind him with a click. Immediately the tension is back in Derek’s posture, and he flinches away from Stiles’s hands like they’ve turned violent. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, Stiles found this little lady...” Scott begins, and launches earnestly into the cover story Stiles had provided. Stiles opens his mouth and closes it again without correcting him.

He’d been planning on confessing his little joke to Scott about now, but with Derek acting like this, he suddenly doesn’t much want to. Maybe Scott doesn’t need to know. Derek’s going to be embarrassed enough knowing Stiles and Deaton saw him like this, let alone Scott -- he actually seems to care what Scott thinks of him, for one thing.

Deaton’s eyes are going back and forth from Derek to a charm on the wall which is glowing slightly. Scott hasn’t noticed yet, too focused on the tragedy of abandoned pets in general and Princess Frederica in particular. 

“Is that so, Stiles?” Deaton says neutrally, after Scott finishes speaking.

“Yes,” Stiles says, trying to squeeze as much meaning as possible into his tone, and flicks his eyes over to Scott. Smooth as butter, Deaton follows his gaze and clears his throat.

“While you’re here, Scott, would you mind organizing the medication doses for the morning? I’m afraid I didn’t get to it today, what with one thing and another.” 

“Sure, no problem,” says Scott, looking a bit surprised, and goes into the back. Turning to the counter, Deaton takes out a pen and paper and writes something down, hands the note to Stiles. It says, in firm, black letters, _Derek?_

Stiles just nods, giving up for now on finding out how Deaton knows half the shit he knows. 

“Okay,” says Deaton out loud, smiling reassuringly, “She’ll need a shot, but she should be fine after that.”

“Great!” says Stiles. He feels more relieved than he expected to, considering how much funnier -- and more easily contained, he recalls wistfully -- this version of Derek is. Deaton busies himself with various powders and mysterious jars.

But when he tries to approach Derek with the syringe, Derek’s ears go flat, and he hisses like a snake. 

“Dude, it’s Deaton, he’s going to fix you,” Stiles says, and snickers. “I mean, not _fix_ you, I promise I won’t let him touch anything you’d miss.” Castration jokes are apparently not reassuring, because Derek doesn’t relax until Deaton backs up a few steps.

“Perhaps if you kept him calm, Stiles?” Deaton says. 

“You just want me to lose a finger instead of you,” Stiles contends, but he reaches out again for Derek’s head. Unexpectedly, Derek allows the touch. Stiles must be so obviously harmless that he bypasses all Derek’s defenses, or something.

Once Derek’s ears are back up, Deaton tries approaching again, and this time, although Derek stays tense, he doesn’t lose his shit. Even when Deaton injects his concoction, he only lets out a traumatized meow, not moving from his position. Stiles murmurs reassuring nonsense to him and cups his face in his hands so he can rub his fuzzy cheekbones with his thumbs.

There’s absolutely no warning, not even a noise. It just happens. Between one blink and the next, Derek changes back. 

The face between Stiles’s palms is still kind of furry, thanks to Derek’s cultivated stubble. The cheekbones are still prominent. The eyes are similar, too, still that odd changeable green, staring back at Stiles from a few inches away. But everything else is suddenly a lot more attractive, and a lot more human-shaped, and a lot more noticeably naked.

“Oh God, don’t kill me,” Stiles yelps, yanking back his hands like they’ve been burned. Derek starts to sit up, and then looks down at his own nudity and goes back into an awkward crouch. Deaton averts his eyes; Stiles can only imagine the view from behind.

He loses a few seconds doing just that.

“Stiles,” Derek snaps, scowling at him like he can read minds. God fucking forbid.

"Uh, what? Nothing. I should go," Stiles says nonsensically, looking at the ceiling. He puts his hands in his pockets where they can cause him no more trouble and sidles towards the door. "Hey, Scott, we should go," he yells into the back. 

It's a relief when the door to the examination room closes between him and Derek's terrible, unblinking gaze. Human Derek is no easier to beat in a staring contest than cat Derek had been. Maybe the next time Stiles gets to see someone that attractive naked, it won't be accompanied by that particular facial expression, but he isn't going to bet the farm on it. Stiles knows his life.

Scott appears from the back, looking relieved to be delivered from off-hours work. 

"Where's Princess --" he starts, and Stiles waves a dismissive hand, thinking on his feet.

"Uh, she’s, uh -- she’s _microchipped_ ,” he says, herding Scott towards the door with his body. “Her owners are coming to get her."

"Oh, good," Scott says happily. "I told you we should take her to Deaton!"

"Yup, you were right," Stiles says, and yanks his car door open unnecessarily hard.

That night, his bed feels cold for no good reason. He has to get up and go find an extra blanket, even though he was perfectly _fine_ before Derek and his hot water-bottle body pushed their way into his life without being asked. Just as he's gotten himself all tucked in again, muttering complaints into his pillow, there's a quiet knock at his window.

"Oh my God, _what_?" he says, exasperated, and flings back all the blankets so he can go let Derek in, because of course it's Derek. Nobody else has that kind of timing.

Stiles’s eyes have adjusted, and he can see pretty well in the dim light from outside. Derek slides through the window like a piece of the night come to life and then just kind of stands there, rubbing the back of his neck. 

"Uh, hey," he says, and clears his throat. Then he clears it again.

"Hey, how's it going," says Stiles, just to fill the silence.

"Not bad," Derek responds seriously. "Thanks for, you know." He shrugs. Stiles does, in fact, know. 

"Yeah, anytime," he says, nodding. "Not that this particular situation is so likely to come up again, but you know what I mean."

"Yeah," Derek says. Stiles crosses his arms. 

"So was there any reason you came here, or just --"

"My bed is full of -- water," Derek says quickly, like Stiles is more likely to buy this if he gets it out fast. "The mattress got wet. When it rained." They both glance at the clear, cloudless sky.

"Um, okay," Stiles says, shifting his weight. "Did you want to --"

"Yeah," Derek says, and promptly takes off his boots. Stiles gets into bed and stares at the ceiling, listening to the clink of Derek's belt and the rustle of fabric. After the sounds of undressing stop, there's a long, ambiguous pause. When Stiles looks over, Derek is just standing in the middle of the room in nothing but boxer-briefs, feet planted. The shadows hide his expression.

"Are you coming in?" Stiles asks, and holds up a corner of the covers in invitation. Almost before he can finish the sentence, Derek is sliding into bed next to him, taking up more space than the night before, but radiating just as much heat.

The blankets trap the warm air between them. Stiles is still lying on his back, and Derek is curled on his side, facing Stiles, a careful inch of space separating their bodies.

"Oh, fuck it," Stiles says out loud, and pulls his hand out from under the covers so he can skritch the back of Derek's head, the soft hair at the nape of his neck, right next to the warmth of his skin. Derek's eyes flutter closed, and he shifts forward until he can rest his heavy head on Stiles's shoulder.

Stiles rubs his fingers through Derek’s hair and listens to his nearly inaudible sigh. He can feel Derek settling in by degrees, letting the tension seep incrementally out of his body until he’s as boneless and relaxed as he’d been when Stiles picked him up.

If werewolves could purr, Stiles thinks the bed would be shaking.


End file.
